


Daughter of the rain and snow

by youremyqueen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Gen Fic, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Prompt Fic, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-06
Updated: 2012-04-06
Packaged: 2017-11-03 03:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youremyqueen/pseuds/youremyqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alayne Stone marries Harrold Hardyng and becomes Sansa Stark again. And then she takes the North. </p><p>Written for youcallitwinter's comment ficathon on lj.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daughter of the rain and snow

Alayne Stone marries Harrold Hardyng and becomes Sansa Stark again. And then she takes the North. 

Her father's bannermen, _her bannermen_ , rally to her side near as soon as she appears - all but the Boltons, of course, but never mind them, because she roots them out from hoof to hair and lays the sort of ruin upon them that makes Tywin Lannister's wroth seem gentle in comparison. Next to the cries for vengeance of her fellow northmen, ' _The Rains of Castamere_ ' sounds like a jaunty tune.

She drives Stannis all the way up to The Wall and the Lannisters down through the Riverlands and back to their stinking pit of a capital city. She conquers her enemies using the heroics that her songs taught her and the ruthlessness that Petyr taught her. She brings freedom, justice and peace to the North and she does it all with a Hardyng cloak around her shoulders, from one of the few sections of Winterfell that her men had been able to substantially rebuild.

And once all is said and done - once Kevan Lannister sends her reasonable peace terms, once Stannis and his red woman flee across the narrow sea chasing after the whisper of dragons, once the self-proclaimed queen of the Iron Islands swears that she has no interest in any more rebellions - Sansa still doesn't have what she wants.

She scours the countryside for any hint of her sister, ruins the Freys as bad as the Boltons in the search for her brother and mother's bones, she tries desperately to rebuild her family in the same way she'd rebuilt their home, but it all comes to very little. Winterfell's towers reach toward the sky once again, beautiful and proud as the North, but all she comes up with in the way of kin is a half-dead half-brother struggling through the snows with a band of starved Wildlings, a near-unrecognizable turncloak of a ward, and her childhood friend, Jeyne Poole, who greets her by vehemently insisting that she's Sansa's sister.

"No," Theon Greyjoy says softly into Jeyne's ear, white-haired and barely able to stand upright as he is. "That's not your name. Remember your name."

Jeyne is thin and frightened and has nowhere to go, so Sansa makes her a handmaid and keeps her close. She wants to have Theon put to the sword, but Jeyne breaks into tears at that, and Asha Greyjoy - who had been instrumental in conquering Stannis and is owed some measure of courtesy for her help - will not hear of it. Theon himself doesn't seem to have an opinion on the matter either way, so Sansa lets him live.

Her advisors are strongly against this decision, but she is the Queen in the North and it is her decision to make. "Would you rather we go to war with the Iron Islands over it? _Again_?" she asks them, remembering to keep her voice strong. "Has the North not bled enough yet?" 

After that, no one contests her on the matter, but no one is particularly decent to Theon, either, but for Jeyne and his sister. He spends most of his time in the Godswood, sitting in front of the heart tree, sometimes even speaking to it.

"Your people don't keep the Old Gods, do you?" Sansa asks Asha once, because talking to Theon - to the man who slaughtered her brothers - makes her sick to her stomach with a violent mix of hate and pity.

"No," Asha says. She'd sent most of her Ironmen back to their islands, but she insists on staying as long as her brother insists on staying. She's coarser company than Sansa prefers to keep, but she's at least livelier than Jeyne's delicate fearfulness. "Nor the shiny Seven that those Southern leeches insist upon. We've no use for your cushy land Gods out on the sea."

"So then why does he -" Sansa starts.

"Insist upon praying to that tree?" Asha interrupts. Asha interrupts often, which is an unfavorable habit, to be sure, but in the last few years Sansa has met many a courteous and gracious knight with habits by far worse, so she isn't overly bothered by it. "I asked him the same thing. And do you know what he said?"

Sansa shakes her head. Theon doesn't say much, in her experience, except, _'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,'_ and _'You have to remember your name,'_ with a kind of frightening earnestness that makes Sansa uncomfortable.

Asha's fingers play along the knife she keeps at her hip and she leans forward in an almost conspiratorial way that reminds Sansa depressingly of her girlhood days of telling secrets with Jeyne. "He said it's because the Drowned God - our God - doesn't ever call him by name."

Sansa's brow creases. "What does that mean?"

Asha leans back in her chair and tosses a grape into her mouth. "Fucked if I know. The Bolton bastard did a number on him, could mean anything." She plays it off, but her eyes are sad and tired, and those are feelings that Sansa understands well.

Things are quiet for a while - the smallfolk are rebuilding their towns, the war is wrapping up, Asha is uncouth, Jeyne is a bit mad, Theon is madder still - and it all becomes almost familiar until Jon Snow shows up.

He's poorly bandaged in several places and being carried on a makeshift stretcher, would like as not have died if not for the ragged, frostbitten Wildlings who'd brought him this far, led by a short, stout man with a booming voice and a golden-haired woman with a babe clutched to her breast. Sansa gives them all shelter and has her new Maester tend to Jon's wounds. In her childhood, she had only barely tolerated her bastard brother, but when his eyes finally flick open on the fifth day, she's never been so happy to see someone in her life.

He doesn't recognize her at first, she thinks, from the fuzzy confusion that colors his face - but when he does, his hand shoots out to grab her arm and he chokes on his own breath trying to say something. She has him brought water, if only so that he can sit up and tell her, " _Sansa_ ," in a voice cracked from disuse and full of disbelieving awe.

"Hello, Jon," she says. "I've heard that you were made Lord Commander of the Night's Watch."

He blinks, looks down at his bandaged chest, and says something that might be, "Not anymore," but she doesn't have time to makes sure, as he passes out again soon after.

Sansa sits with him most days, for lack of anything better to do, as he heals. They talk about Arya and Robb and Bran and Rickon, about their father and her mother and how beautiful Winterfell used to be in the summer of their youth. Neither of them make much mention of what they'd done since then, nor what they plan to do next. It's not something she enjoys dwelling on, and she wagers he feels the same. He progresses quite nicely until - somehow - he finds out that Theon is there, neither hanged nor headless, and reopens one of his wounds trying to get out of bed to go hunt him down.

He fails, of course, being barely able to walk on his own, and he and Asha make a lot of noise yelling at each other about the difference between justice and vengeance - "He's paid enough!" - "He killed my brothers, burned my home. There is no such thing as _paying enough_ for that."

The matter isn't settled even when Sansa settles it, giving him a variation of the speech she gave her advisors. No, it isn't truly settled until Jon can walk again and drags himself to the armory for a sword, and then to the Godswood to hold it to Theon's throat. Isn't settled until Theon simply bows his head for the blow, and Jon stares at him for a long time, at his missing fingers and the loose skin hanging off of him, and says something about 'not deserving the mercy of death,' before throwing the sword down and turning away.

Sansa sits by his bed the next day, as with all the other days, and doesn't comment on it. In a way, she understands. She understands a lot now.

Her lord husband stops in for a few days inbetween riding across the North in her name, and she greets him graciously if unfamiliarly. Beyond the marriage ceremony, beyond the bedding that had been almost easy in comparison to that of her first marriage, she knows very little about Harrold. He is kind to her, brings her favorable news, and kisses her goodbye when he rides off again.

"Weren't you meant to marry a king, once?" Jeyne asks her timidly, as she draws her bath that night.

"Yes," Sansa tells her, feeling somehow far older than the other girl, despite the horrors they had both been exposed to. "And believe me, Jeyne, Harrold Hardyng is far preferable to a king." Though, if she's honest, anyone is far preferable to the king in question.

All is quiet again. Jon drinks and makes plans with his Wildlings, Theon stays with his heart tree and Asha stays with Theon, and Jeyne - after enough time has passed - starts to say things again that remind Sansa of the girl she once knew. No one tries to kill anyone else all that often, and although the snows are heavy and the winds are cold, there is peace again in the North.

That is before the two ravens come, though, within only a few days of each other. The first is addressed to Jon and comes from The Wall. It is signed by someone who identifies himself only as Satin, and reads, _'You need to return. Winter has come.'_

The second comes from the south, and is not signed or addressed at all. It contains only one word. _'Dragons.'_

And so both messages prove themselves true, as dead men stream down from the north, led as an army by glistening shadows that barely appear when you look straight at them. And King's Landing burns under the breath of a black beast with a girl on its back, producing smoke that can be seen all the way in the Riverlands. 

And Sansa - Sansa is tired. She wants her home, wants her mother and her father and her long dead wolf, wants to get to know her half brother again and her husband for the first time, wants to find her sister and to finish rebuilding Winterfell's stables. Wants to be able to rest for just a little while.

But she is the Queen in the North, so she calls her bannermen, has Asha call her Ironmen, sends Jon back to The Wall, and braces herself for even more loss.


End file.
